TD: Go on.
CG: Mr. Gerardi wants to use it as the cover of the yearbook. I told Declan and his friend, Rev, and Declan flipped out.
TD: Why?
CG: I don’t know. He got in my face and said he didn’t want a memory of this year.
TD: He sounds like a real prick. I’m wondering if I should be offended that you think I’m him.
CG: Sometimes he is a real prick. But I didn’t take it well, either.
TD: Because of your mother.
CG: Yeah.
TD: Don’t you think she’d be proud, that a picture you took would be on the cover of the yearbook?
CG: No. She’d be proud if I took a picture of the Baltimore riots that ended up in Time or something. She said photography was a way to show what the world is really like.
TD: Yeah, but in snapshots, right?
CG: Yes . . . ?
TD: A snapshot is one moment. When I was looking up your mother’s photographs, I clicked around and looked at some other stuff. I found one from the Vietnam War, where a man is shooting a prisoner in the head. Do you know it?
CG: Yes. It’s a famous photograph.
TD: Which man is the bad guy?
I blink and sit up again. I know exactly what picture he’s talking about because it’s fairly graphic. A man’s death is captured in the image. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know the history surrounding the shot, just that it was pivotal in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War. I’ve always assumed the “bad guy” was the man with the gun, because—well, because he was killing someone else. But I don’t know anything beyond that moment in time.
CG: I’ve always thought the man with the gun, but now I’m not so sure.
TD: The man with the gun was the chief of police. He was executing the other guy for killing more than thirty people in the street, some of them children.
CG: I don’t even know what to say. I feel like I should have known that.
TD: Don’t feel too bad. I’m reading from Wikipedia right now.
CG: I don’t understand what any of this has to do with a stupid photo in a yearbook.
TD: I mean a photo is just that: a moment in time. We don’t know what’s really going on with the people in the picture. And we don’t know what’s going on with the photographer. What makes it important is what we bring to the photo: our assumption of who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. What makes it important is how we feel when we look at it. And a photograph doesn’t have to be about riots or death or famine or children at play in a war zone to make an impact.
CG: So you’re saying it shouldn’t bother me that it’s going to be on the yearbook.
TD: Yes.
CG: Okay, then.
TD: And I’m saying you should be proud of it.
CG: You haven’t even seen it.
TD: Send it to me.
CG: I can’t. It’s at school.
TD: Well, it has to be pretty good if they chose your photo over making all the seniors stand in lines to spell out the school initials.
CG: Thank you.
TD: It’s okay to succeed at something your mother did. Even in a different way.
Those words hit me so hard that I fall back on the pillow. My chest aches with pressure. I want to cry. I am crying.
You’re okay.
I sniff and hold myself together.
CG: It’s okay to be mad that your mom is pregnant.
TD: I’m not mad. I’m . . . extraneous.
CG: You’re not extraneous.
TD: I am. She took this douchebag’s name when she married him. Now there’s nothing linking me to her, and only something linking me to a man stuck in prison.
CG: There’s no name linking me to my mother, either, but I’m still connected to her. I feel it every day.
He doesn’t say anything to that. I wait for a while, until the suspense is killing me.
CG: Did I say the wrong thing?
TD: No.
CG: Are you okay?
TD: I don’t know.
CG: Does she know how you feel?
TD: My mother?
CG: Yes.
TD: No.
CG: Maybe you should tell her.
TD: I don’t think so.
CG: Take it from someone who can’t tell her mother anything anymore. You should tell her everything you can.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
From: Cemetery Girl <[email protected]> To: The Dark <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, October 8 06:22:23 AM
Subject: Mothers
My mom was always on assignment, so we never had much opportunity for “girl talk.” My best friend is very close to her mother, and they talk all the time. I envy that.
Mom and I could have talked by email, and sometimes we did, but when I was young and learning to write, she encouraged me to send her letters. I did, and she would write back. When I was nine years old, getting a letter with a bunch of foreign stamps would be the highlight of my week. I did a project in fifth grade where I tried to collect stamps from as many countries as possible just because I already had two dozen in my desk at home.
Even after I had an email account and a phone, the letter writing stuck. I started writing several times a week. I told her everything.
Now I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.
This is so hard to type, I’m tempted to delete this whole email.
In my letters, sometimes I lied.
I know you won’t get the full effect, but I deleted and retyped that line seven times.
Now eight.
I am forcing myself to keep going.
I lied to my mother.
Her letters were full of these grand adventures. She’d tell me about warlords or peace treaties or ballistic missiles or brushes with death. Nothing in her letters was false—she had the photographs to prove it. “Ian is sending me to Malaysia this week,” she’d say. Or, “I’m going to be another few days in Iran. Ian wants me to see if I can get some shots of the protesters.”
Ian is her editor, and sometimes I’d be tempted to write back and ask if Ian could assign her to spend a few weeks at home.